5
Per rule 6, please back up your opinion with the reasoning behind it.
JavaScript was originally built in just ten days to handle lightweight tasks within a web browser, like validating forms or animating buttons, not to power the heavy logic of server-side infrastructure. Using Node.js forces this fragile scripting language to do work it wasn't designed for, lacking the strict stability, type safety, and multi-threading capabilities of robust languages actually engineered for servers, like Java or Go. By pushing JavaScript onto the backend, the industry prioritized the convenience of not learning a second language over engineering rigor, resulting in bloated applications, security vulnerabilities from excessive dependencies, and significant performance ceilings that proper backend languages simply do not have.
I believe the problem is developers, not the language. The problem is developers importing node.js and other giant frameworks for a simple function. That's not a language problem. Bad coders are going to cause the same problems in any language.
The same problem exists in C when a simple Windows app requires a separate install of the vcruntine140.dll. Java also has enormous libraries that programmers abuse because they are cutting and pasting codestack they don't understand.
Popular opinion, downvoted.
If it's popular then why does it still exist and applications today are still being built using it?
Because its the only language in browsers so it's ubiquitous, and it's elegant and cost effective (note i didn't say it's a good idea) to use the same language on back-end and front-end.
Webassembly is a thing, and it's only a matter of time before Google or Microsoft ship either a dotnet runtine or a go interpreter or some other FOSS shippable component as a chromium plugin or something.
This is a popular opinion as far as I'm concerned.
As an IT professional with like 5 years of web dev experience and am now in cybersecurity, node.js + npm + chromium = electron = literal fucking minefield scattered across the entire internet and beyond.
If it's popular then why do so many of those things still exist?
Because project managers talk to stakeholders and have no idea how anything works.
And that's because when people who know how things work talk to stakeholders, no one buys.
Welcome. To, the machine.
"Murder is bad" is a popular opinion. So why do so many murders still happen???
Comparing using Node.js to murder is hilarious.
Node.js is the preferred backend solution among mass murderers
JavaScript should not exist, at all.
It's a pretty core aspect of the web, I think it's necessary, but it was taken too far.
Some kind of scripting language was necessary, I don't think JavaScript had to be it.
First there was C++: bloated, complicated, and not memory safe. So they came up with Java, which was similar in syntax but much less complicated, with great memory safety, and a decent type / object system. It was popular in the day, with a cultish fan base, and was seen as cool. So they (meaning Netscape) wrote something that looked like Java but got rid of half the good features. Nobody thought at the time that JS mattered much, it would be soon replaced by something better.
And that was decades ago. It was never meant to run the web for that long. It did an acceptable job, but it is very frustrating in the long run.
JavaScript started out as a cut down Smalltalk clone because the dev thought that Smalltalk was cool. Then they bolted a curly braces syntax onto it and called it JavaScript for marketing reasons.
The big alternative was Microsoft's VBScript, based on Visual Basic and not available on any browser other than Internet Explorer.
We're arguably better off with JS in the browser. Of course server-side JS is a spectacularly bad idea.
I always felt like TypeScript was a sad attempt to make JavaScript something it isn't.
There are perfectly good languages and JavaScript should only be used for lightweight scripting purposes. Sure Node can work for small web projects, but man what a clusterfuck it becomes at the enterprise level.
Even for small things it turns into a clustefuck.
It's almost a miracle how bad it is.
It's almost like Perl in that regard.
this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2026
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